


A Flash of Anger

by Call_Me_Yours (Darke_Eco_Freak)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Basically Barry's pissed, Gen, because after the legends of tomorrow episode of the crossover, cisco bashing, cisco's sounding like a hypocrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8770504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darke_Eco_Freak/pseuds/Call_Me_Yours
Summary: Barry changed the timeline so of course he's responsible for all the terrible things that have happened because of it. Nevermind that he didn't actually do any of those things and that each individual has free will. No, Barry changed the timeline so he's solely responsible.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This follows up to the DC CW TV event so spoilers if you haven't watched it yet. Basically this is me venting about all the people (Cisco) blaming Barry for all the bad things (Dante's death) that happened due to him changing the timeline. This is salt, plain and simple, and me exorcising all these demons.

Cisco thinks he doesn’t know but he does, Barry knows because he knows what tears and rips in the timeline look like. He might not be sure why he can see them so easily or how he even knows they exist but he does and he can so he knows.

When Oliver invites him out for drinks, Barry almost says no because he’s waiting for Cisco to say something. To talk about how he understands now about how the littlest changes can fuck up an entire timeline but there’s nothing and he ends up going out with Oliver.

When the party’s over and done with and no one’s left in the Star Labs hanger but himself and the garbage, Barry almost calls Cisco; his friend. He didn’t kill Dante, a drunk driver did and maybe Dante would’ve died anyway without Barry creating alternate timelines or not because maybe somethings were just meant to happen. The way he’s heard it, Dante and Cisco weren’t close in this timeline either and Cisco still got kidnapped and he still built the cold gun in the first place and didn’t tell him about it.

As he’s heard it, Barry still created a time remnant of himself and let that remnant die to save the rest of them. He still let his speed get taken by Zoom and he still got lost in the speedforce trying to save the rest of the City and his father is still dead and everything is just as fucked up and horrible. Caitlin may have powers now but who knows if she had powers before since she was hiding them from everyone and who knows if Barry changing a timeline had anything to do with John having a son instead of a daughter. There are some things that have happened that he just can’t explain based on what he did, even with time aftershocks or whatever the hell Thawne called them.

He's speeding around the hanger, cleaning everything up and wondering about alternate timelines and almost crashes into a wall when he remembers the first alternate timeline he created. The very first time he ever created a timeline back when the tsunami was going to crash into Central City and Cisco fucking **_died_**. Barry going back in time then saved Cisco’s life, it saved all their lives and of course, why should any of that matter now? They were still alive and this was all his fault.

Well maybe not all his fault, the specks of…time distortion are still hanging around in the air; ghostly and transparent, like the shadow of a person almost but not person shaped. The specks are only in the places where Cisco was, where he talked with Felicity and where he laughed with Sara and where he argued with Mick over the heat gun. In fact, they’re dancing in the air like wisps of smoke, slight but significant and damning all at once and Barry is angry.

He’s fucking **_pissed_**.

Cisco’s acting like he’s the only one to lose someone because of all the shit that’s happened. Barry’s lost his mother, had to watch her bleed out and die, had to beg her killer to stab her so many times her lungs were a pulpy mess. Barry’s lost his father, the only person who never questioned what he was doing as a hero, his moral compass, he had to watch another crazy speedster kill his father who’s been locked away for so many years. Barry has had to watch Wally bleed out and nearly die in a hospital bed in another timeline and he’s had to watch Joe die on another earth.

Barry has seen people dying and dying and dying and every time he closes his eyes, he sees them dying all over again. He sees the people he couldn’t save and he sees the family he had to let go because it was the right thing to do. And here’s Cisco, fucking Cisco, playing the high and mighty card when he screwed with time too. Jumped at the change to time travel like it was some kind of field trip!

“Fuck!” Barry yells but his voice is lost in the wind because he’s running, he’s running higher than Mach five and sound can’t keep up. He’s zipping across the city and he’s running on water, he’s everywhere but every step just makes him angrier.

The Dominators blamed him for the time aberrations? They blamed him for all the metas on the god damn planet? Where were they when Thawne was playing God just so he could go back to his own time and live to screw with other people’s lives another day? Where were they when Zoom was attempting the largest genocide in the history of anything? Where were they when Savitar was making speedsters or when he was killing people or when any of those speedsters were breaking time because they felt like it?

Why is he the only one held responsible for all of it? So he created a new timeline, so had Cisco! There was no way of knowing if anything Barry had done had actually affected the course of events in this timeline, there was no way of knowing if all of this was already pre-planned and already written out.

Barry trips as he’s going up the side of a building and he tumbles for four stories until he catches himself again. The skin of his palms are grazed and raw, bleeding, but he doesn’t even care. He’s angry and hurt and he didn’t even get to mourn his dad properly, he didn’t even finish the eulogy. As much as he knows, Cisco has had more time to mourn Dante than Barry has had to mourn his dad, Flashpoint aside because Flashpoint was nothing but a shallow, shadow of the man he loved.

“Fuck everything,” he hisses, grabbing onto the edge of a building and launching himself off into the void. There are a few milliseconds of perfect, exhilarating weightlessness and then he’s running again, his own momentum throwing himself into another building and onto a new surface.

Barry runs for the rest of the night, zipping through drive thru after drive thru when he needs to refuel, leaving money of course because he’s the good guy and it’s what he does but he never calms down. The time distortions are still hanging around when he gets back to the hanger, and no amount of lightning or plastic cups or napkins or computer monitors thrown at them make them disappear.

When he finally falls face first into the crappy mattress he set up in one of the rooms, Barry feels the red hot anger die down to a simmering ember in the pit of his stomach. The embers keep him warm in the morning chill and they remind him of everything he’s given up and lost and had taken from him as he drifts off to sleep.


End file.
